Craigslist

Big-Hearted Site Makes Life Easier For All Of Us

By Julie Peterson

The Personal Side of Craigslist

I have a tee shirt from Craigslist. The money I bought it with goes to support community service efforts. I wear it often since I love craigslist so much. It took me a while to realize that when I wear it people who must mostly have their mind in the gutter, assume I am a regular poster on the casual encounters section. Actually, I had never even read that section until recently, but even there Craigslist outshines regular newspaper classifieds, in my opinion. I have used Craigslist to find employees, get renters, make friends, free cycle things, sell good stuff, find great stuff, find yard and estate sales, get clients, find dates for my elderly mother, do salary research, do rental research, get questions answered, find contractors to fix my house, and get entertained. I can’t remember how I ever lived without it.

Is there a “Craig” behind Craigslist? There sure is! Craigslist was started by programmer Craig Newmark as a fun project for his friends in San Francisco. Craigslist is now one-fourth owned by Ebay, although so far the corporation has done nothing with the ownership and now even seems to be creating a competing site.

Craigslist, like Wikipedia, is policed by volunteers. I personally police the section of my local craigslist that is related to my husband’s business. You can report violations of the Terms of Service by emailing the violation to
abuse@craigslist.com and they will promptly take action.

Outstanding Aspects of Craigslist

An extremely popular site, Craigslist is in fact in the Top 10 list of internet sites. For those who aren’t familiar with it, Craigslist is a free classifieds service available online and sorted by location. It exemplifies the degree of popular that can be achieved for a website through word-of-mouth marketing alone. Furthermore, Craigslist demonstrates a business enterprise that refuses to have money-making as its main goal. No advertisements appear on the site, a tribute to its service-oriented nature. rather, Craigslist is more intent on doing what seems best for society rather than maximizing a monetary return. In addition, Craigslist is a leader in the open source movement, although their product isn’t open source software.

Other Craigslist Characteristics

Many users enjoy Craigslist because it seems to march to a beat all its own. A wonderful resource for many needs, perhaps its greatest endorsement is that Craigslist is spreading not only all over the country, but even to other parts of the world as well. In fact, many turn to Craigslist before ever opening their local newspapers.

Threats to Craigslist

As already discussed, Craigslist is not threatened by newspaper competition since many people go to Craigslist first, or even exclusively. The site’s reputation as a friendly community is only threatened by users who take advantage of it to post inappropriate or mis-categorized content. Spammers and scammers could potentially infiltrate Craigslist and turn it into a website full of get-rich-quick schemes. As mentioned earlier, Craigslist is policed by volunteers; let’s hope they’re able to continue doing the good job they’ve been doing so we can all continue to benefit from this wonderful resource.